Liz Ireland (5 page)

Lang loved to see Emma laugh—something she’d been doing a lot more of this evening, now that he was stowed safely away in an upstairs bedroom. He felt a lot better himself with the new arrangement, even given that there was now another person in the house to worry about. “I need to hold a powwow with this youngster,” he said, feigning aggrievement. “I’m half inclined to think you’re cheating.”

“And I’m half inclined to think that you’re not really a gambler at all.”

Lang’s poker face was truly tested in the sharp scrutiny
of those green eyes. She wasn’t teasing any longer. He itched to look away, but he didn’t, forcing himself to remain smiling. How much did she know? Her words made him wary, which he supposed he should have remained all along. He couldn’t afford to let his guard down—even before sweet, generous Emma Colby.

Sweet, sly Emma Colby.

He looked up at her and let out a dramatic sigh. “All right, all right. If you must know the truth, I’ve been letting you win.”

“
Letting
me!” The words were practically a shriek of outrage. “That’s the most preposterous thing I’ve ever heard!”

“It would hardly be right for me to play at full speed. I’m a guest, and after all, you’ve been so kind….”

“That’s the most feeble excuse for poor playing I’ve ever heard,” she scoffed.

“How was I to know that beneath that sweet, pretty, innocent exterior beat the heart of a unrepentant card fiend?”

“Now I know you’re lying. That’s the second time you’ve said I was pretty. I suspect you’re trying to flatter me into losing to you!”

She wasn’t so far from the truth, but he couldn’t let one misperception pass. “But I
do
think you’re pretty. There’s nothing deceptive in my saying so.”

She blushed.

“Aren’t you accustomed to men speaking their minds to you?”

“Yes, but unfortunately that’s not what they usually say!”

He laughed, then suddenly marveled at the luck he’d had. Was he really lying in a warm bed, laughing with a pretty woman? Miraculous! Two days ago he’d thought his
life was over. “Then these Midday men ought to be horsewhipped. Why should a girl like yourself still be trotting around unmarried?”

His words appeared to shock her down to her toes. “You’re very forward, aren’t you?”

“It’s best to be direct, if you want answers.”

She sighed and fastened a level stare on him. “Part of what’s wrong, I suspect, is that I’m not a girl anymore. I’m an…” She swallowed. “An old maid.”

He barked out a sharp laugh.

She stiffened. “I’ve heard it from a very good authority.”

“I’ve known girls younger than you who look twice as old.” He’d also known a girl twice as beautiful yet at the same time less dazzling. Lucy. The thought of her threatened to bring his spirits low. Why should he keep thinking of that sad history now when he had myriad other problems to deal with? Maybe it was because no woman since Lucy had captured his eye…until Emma. But that probably had to do more with the fact that Emma was so singular. She’d saved his life.

He looked away, trying to put all thoughts of women out of his head. With one foot in the gallows, he had no time for that nonsense now. Thinking of Emma, entertaining ideas about how shocked she would be to learn that he daydreamed about feeling her lips beneath his, was pointless. He couldn’t kiss her. He had nothing—just had a life of running ahead of him, which didn’t seem much of a life at all.

And as if to underline this fact, at that moment Emma peered out the window to watch something in the pasture below. Lang, too, looked out…and felt his heart sink in his chest. Below them, a dappled gray mare grazed on fresh shoots of grass. His memory wasn’t so far gone that he
didn’t remember the stolen horse that had saved his life, and probably had almost cost him it, as well.

“Nice animal.” The description of the horse a bank robber had stolen was probably all over by now. In his mind he was packing his bags, wondering how he would escape.
If
he could escape.

“Thank you,” Emma said.

His head whipped around to gape at her. Could he have heard her correctly? Had she just claimed ownership of his stolen nag?

Emma shrugged her thin shoulders. “The trouble is, she always wants to graze too close to the house.” She looked at him, her eyes sharp, surely missing none of the confusion in his face. “I should put her up in the barn, don’t you think?”

Lang nodded his head numbly. “That would be a good idea.”

They played another hand, and the subject of the mare was never raised again. Lang began to think that maybe he remembered wrong and the little mare did belong to Emma. Maybe she didn’t even suspect who he really was….

But suddenly, subtly, Emma let him know that he couldn’t live under this delusion for long. “I’d better check on Lorna soon,” she said as she dealt out a last hand. “She’s so nervous these days….”

Something in the change in Emma’s tone made him stiffen. “Why? Because her time’s coming?”

Green eyes met his flatly. “Because of the outlaw.”

The air between them crackled with tension.

“Outlaw?” he asked, scratching his uncomfortable beard. “I, uh, guess I haven’t heard.” He glanced at the cards she’d dealt him, still face down on the coverlet. His hands felt too heavy to pick them up.

“It’s all anyone talks about,” Emma said.

“What’s this fella done?”

She picked up her cards and inspected them. “Murder, they say.”

The room began to spin. Lang was certain he’d heard her wrong, but her eyes told him he hadn’t.
Murder?
As if bank robbing and horse thieving weren’t enough! “Who…” His mouth was so dry he could barely rasp out a question. “Who did he murder?”

“A bank clerk.”

Lang ran through the day of the robbery over and over in his mind; but he would have remembered killing someone. He’d never done serious harm to another person in his life. And the only person who’d been shot that day was himself.

Then he remembered. Moments before his brother and his cohorts had run out of the bank,
two
shots had been fired in quick succession. The sound of the first gunshot had so surprised Lang, he’d turned to see who had fired. Then the second shot had struck him. Now he couldn’t be sure from whose gun either bullet had come, but he was fairly certain Amos had been behind him. Amos, who didn’t want a big brother’s interference.

And Lang looked just enough like Amos to confuse a witness…. The light-headed queasiness he’d experienced when trying to walk up those stairs returned.

“Murder,” he breathed, his voice reedy and thin.

“Terrible business.” Emma clucked her tongue. “The sheriff was here just yesterday telling me about it.”

Lang bit his lip. Maybe he should turn himself in, and tell the truth. He shouldn’t be lying here taking advantage of Emma’s kindness when he was a wanted man. For murder. Good God! Sweat poured out of him.

“I sure could use a drink,” he said.

Emma looked over at the full water pitcher by his side.

He frowned. “I mean something with teeth.”

“Oh.” Emma frowned. “I had some brandy—medicinal brandy, mind you—but…”

Just his luck. “You probably used it all the night I arrived.”

Faint color touched her cheeks, which made him wonder if he hadn’t been the recipient of the last drops of spirits. “Well…yes.”

Never in his life had he had a real craving for liquor—but just this moment his thirst for it was fierce. Drowning himself in alcohol was all he could think of to do to forget—forget Amos, forget the past month, forget that his life, his future, was ruined. Maybe if he drank enough, he would gather up the nerve to march into town to see Emma’s friend the sheriff and turn himself in, and make his future that much shorter. He felt sick. Never had he expected to finish his life at the end of a rope.

“Mr. Archibald, is there something wrong? You haven’t looked at your cards!”

Emma’s pretty face, those intelligent eyes, inspected him. She knew. He knew she knew. So why was she hiding him? Did she pity him for some reason he couldn’t fathom?

He looked at her lips and thought of another way to forget his troubles. How easily he could imagine leaving all thought behind and losing himself in the pleasures of her lips, her flesh. He could almost sense the fresh scent of verbena he would smell when he buried his face in her hair. Or maybe she would prefer camellias. He’d never felt so weak, so much at someone else’s mercy.

“Mr. Archibald.” Emma said his name and reached out to him.

He pulled his hand back, pulled himself together and
gathered his cards in his shaky fist. When he could focus at all, he found himself looking at an inside straight.

Lucky. It was hard to believe that anything in his life could turn lucky at this point.

“Don’t they sell whiskey in Midday?”

Emma glanced up at him, surprised. “Of course, but…”

“I’ll wager this hand against a flask of rye.”

“This hand?” she asked. “You mean gambling?”

He looked at the Mount Everest of matchsticks on her side of the coverlet and almost laughed. What did
she
have to be nervous about? “Surely you don’t have anything against a friendly bet?”

“But you couldn’t expect
me
to buy whiskey!” She eyed him as if he’d turned lunatic on her. “I have my reputation to consider! Why, the store’s run by the biggest gossip in town, and all the ladies gather there.”

He waved off her argument. “Are you going to let a bunch of old crows dictate what you can have in your own house?”

“Well, no—”

“And who cares if a storekeeper knows you like to take a little nip now and then?”

Her cheeks were red. “But I don’t!”

“You can’t let other people tell you how to live for the rest of your life.”

“But I don’t!” she repeated indignantly.

He slapped the covers. “Then just march into that store and announce for the world to hear that you need a bottle of spirits…large size.”

She gazed at him seriously. “Alcohol would make you feel better?”

Pickling himself was as good a way as any to blot out his troubles. He nodded. “Or are you afraid I might leave when you go to town?”

“I don’t think you’ll be going anywhere for a while, Mr. Archibald. You could barely make it up a flight of stairs.”

“I mend quickly.”

“You sound as if you’d like to make a fast getaway,” she said, eyeing him closely.

Lang laughed uncomfortably at her use of desperado lingo. “Personally, I’d like to stay forever…but of course I can’t.”

“Of course.” She looked almost disappointed.

And, oddly, at the thought of leaving Emma, his gut felt a stab of regret that made him blurt impulsively, “If I lose this hand, Miss Emma, I promise I’ll tell you all about myself, and how I got here, and where I’m headed.”

Her eyes glittered in open curiosity, and she glanced with a certain smug assurance at the disparity of their matchsticks. “All right, Mr. Archibald, you have yourself a wager.”

Lang looked into Emma’s green eyes, shocked to find he wanted to confide in her…almost as much as he wanted that whiskey.

“Y
ou want a bottle of
what?
”

As if he hadn’t heard her! Emma lifted her chin and leveled her gaze on Joe Spears, whose sharp eyes were squinting at her in disapproval. Johann was right. Did she really want this old man telling her how to live her life?

Definitely not!

“Rye whiskey,” she repeated.

“Lord-a-mercy!” Joe blinked in amazement.

“Your largest bottle,” Emma added defiantly, drawing open stares from Mrs. Dunston and her married daughter Sara. To her right Emma was flanked by Constance O’Hurlihy, who was wearing a perfectly ridiculous hat topped by a pert bird that stared out like a third set of eyes, and who closed in on Emma with gray arched brows. Emma didn’t care if they all thought she was peculiar, or had gone to Hades in a handcart, nor was she going to offer any explanations. If they wanted to believe she was a tippling old spinster, so be it. This was her declaration of independence.

Of course, she couldn’t help asking herself, was she really independent when she was taking orders from an outlaw? She had few illusions left where Johann Archibald
was concerned. The horse now housed in her barn exactly matched the dappled gray mare described on the Wanted poster—which also sported Johann’s image—outside the post office and on selected poles around town. If Johann Archibald wasn’t Lang Tupper, she wasn’t Emma Colby. And if there was anything she was sure of right at this moment, with grizzled Joe gaping at her as if she’d just asked for a bottle of opium, not whiskey, it was that she was Emma Colby.

Joe let out a bark and scratched his rough gray grizzled face. “Women these days! I guess I’ve lived to see everything!”

Emma smiled placidly. “Doc always said he’d never live in a house without a bottle of spirits. It has many medicinal properties, you know.”

As always when she spoke of her father, Joe looked more reverent. “Doc said that, did he?”

“Yes, indeed. It does a lot more for headaches and insomnia than those pink pills you’re selling. And as for female complaints—”

Joe, horrified at the thought of having to hear one word about “female complaints,” raised his hands in a gesture of surrender. “All right, all right,” he muttered, turning and reaching for what looked like a gallon jug. “I suppose old Doc knew what he was talking about. Not his fault he couldn’t do nothin’ for my lumbago.”

“Maybe you should take a sip now and then,” Emma suggested pertly.

He snorted. “I might try a slug, at that.”

Mrs. Dunston sidled closer to Emma. “I’ll just bet your buying spirits has to do with that McCrae girl!”

Joe, who had butted heads with Emma on the subject of Lorna once before, nearly dropped the large glass bottle as the ladies circled around her like a hostile tribe.

“
Lorna
doesn’t imbibe,” Emma assured them, attempting to hold on to her temper.

The three ladies exchanged skeptical glances, and the thin-lipped Constance smirked. “It’s comforting to know there’s something she’ll say no to.”

Emma’s blood reached boiling point.

“Here’s your bottle, Emma!” Joe interjected from behind the counter, obviously trying to avoid bloodshed in his store. Or maybe he was just trying to angle for a better view.

Emma wasn’t ready to walk away from the self-righteous cluster. What did they know of Lorna and her problems? “Lorna has been so kind and helpful to me, I’m going to ask her to be my assistant.”

Three unblinking sets of eyes—not to mention that bird on Constance’s hat—gaped at her in astonishment. “Your assistant in
what?
” Mrs. Dunston asked.

“The hospital I intend to start here.”

The store fell so silent one could have heard an ant cough.

“You, Emma?” Sara piped up. “A hospital? Here?”

Emma’s lips turned up in a grin. “Yes, Sara. And when my facility is up and running, you might consider coming by to have your hearing checked.”

Constance bustled forward, wagging a long bony finger in Emma’s face. “That’s the most outrageous idea I’ve ever heard! Why does Midday need a hospital? Folks around here get taken care of just fine at home, by their own people, just as it should be.”

“Not all of them, Constance.”

Sara put a hand on her arm condescendingly. “Naturally, Emma, since your dear father died you’ve been lonely, but there’s no call for you to start taking up queer notions.”

“That’s what I told her,” Joe said, “but she don’t listen.”

“Lord-a-mercy!” Mrs. Dunston cried, as if the horror of it was just beginning to sink in. “A hospital, right here in Midday. Why, I’ve got a cousin from Philadelphia and she said those places do nothing but attract riffraff and breed pestilence!”

They all needed a good bashing on the head with a Florence Nightingale primer.

Constance’s thin lips twisted sourly. “It would set a bad example for a young gentlewoman like yourself to work alone among sick people all day, Emma. I’m not sure it’s even proper!”

“No one mentioned propriety when I used to make the rounds with my father,” Emma pointed out.

“Well, no…naturally,” Mrs. Dunston stuttered in response. “Your father could be trusted to know what was best, of course.”

But
she
couldn’t, was the implication. Emma began to see red again. How were women alone supposed to make useful lives for themselves if the world wouldn’t allow them to make their own decisions? She supposed that’s why single women like Constance were encouraged to embrace the most restrictive, small-minded viewpoint, to discourage them from thinking for themselves. Like men. But the thought of turning into Constance O’Hurlihy terrified Emma more than becoming Midday’s pariah.

“You always were the strangest girl, Emma,” Sara said, holding her head loftily. “But I never thought you’d show such poor judgment.”

She and Sara had been schoolmates, but right now Emma felt as if she had been reared on another planet from Sara. “Some of the less fortunate around Midday might
not think it’s poor judgment,” she said sharply. “Those are the people who concern me.”

“Well!” exclaimed Mrs. Dunston, drawing up in offense. All three women were huddled together, gaping at her like offended peahens.

“Thank you for the whiskey, Joe.” Emma turned to him. She had to hold herself back from running out the door, but she wasn’t going to give the ladies the satisfaction of seeing how much they ruffled her.

“I don’t stock that much liquor, you know,” Joe grumbled, looking almost disappointed that she was averting an all-out social war. “Didn’t used to at all till Arvin died and his barroom shut down.”

“Maybe you should consider stocking more,” Emma advised. “In fact, you could turn this whole place into a very fine saloon. All it needs is velvet curtains, mirrors and pictures of unclad women.”

She spun on her heel and bit back a smile, leaving the store clutching her bottle close to hide the fact that her hands were shaking. She could practically feel the shocked glares burning into her back as the door slapped closed behind her.

It was silly, but she felt a rush of pride after the confrontation. All her life she’d been meek and dutiful, devoting her life to studying, and taking care of others, taking care of her father. She’d never done a daring thing in her life, and certainly had never sassed anyone. Now look at her—helping the outcast! Consorting with outlaws! Buying liquor! She was out of control, sliding down an icy slope, free-falling off the mountain of dull Midday respectability.

Worse yet, she was glad. She’d been avoiding coming to town since her father died; now she wondered why. She was alone, but she wasn’t powerless. She had money, for the time being, and she owned property—and she intended
to use both for the town’s good, even if Midday had to be drawn kicking and screaming into acceptance of her hospital.

She marched down the street with a grin until she passed a pole and came face-to-face with Johann’s steely glare. Only it wasn’t Johann’s, really. The expression on the man’s face was mean, direct, ruthless, as if the sketch had been drawn of Johann’s evil twin. The prime difference between them was that the man in the picture was clean shaven, with a deep cleft in his chin, and Johann had a dark scraggly beard—she doubted she’d recognize him without it. The picture also contained none of the brooding sadness she’d seen in Johann’s expression, or the teasing brilliance of his eyes when he played cards with her, or the shock and disbelief that had crossed his face when she’d told him that Lang Tupper was wanted for murder.

It was that last expression that stuck in her mind the most. Because if Johann were really the coldhearted murderer pictured here on this pole, he wouldn’t have blinked an eye at being informed he was wanted for murder. In fact, if Johann were the vicious desperado the authorities were searching for, she had little doubt that she would have been a goner already.

How, then, to explain Johann’s arrival at her house on the very night the law was searching for him, and his wounds, and his similarity to the Wanted portrait?

There was a one-hundred-dollar reward on his head, and she would have liked to believe that the lure of that money didn’t tempt her. But it did. She would need money for her hospital. The only thing preventing her from marching right up to Barton Sealy and offering up her houseguest was that niggling doubt. Johann Archibald…or Lang Tupper? Why didn’t the two fit together better? In spite of all
the damning evidence, she couldn’t envision her patient as a vicious murderer.

And maybe, she thought guiltily, maybe one other reason she didn’t throw her guest to the sheriff was that kiss. The one Johann had forgotten but she couldn’t. Something in him had reached out to her that night; he’d captured more than her lips. There was just the tiniest corner of her heart that couldn’t help but respond to the kiss, and more important, to the way his eyes looked her up and down like no other man’s ever had. Though she knew it was wrong to feel even a sliver of attraction to a man who was a desperado. It was ridiculous. Some might even say pathetic.

Emma frowned, wondering if he would still be there when she returned to the house. Probably, she decided. Where would he go, and how? He knew she’d put his horse in the barn, out of sight, but he was still so weak he’d nearly passed out that morning when she’d changed the dressing on his wound. She doubted he’d survive long on horseback.

No, he was definitely going to have to stay with her a while. Her pulse jumped with guilty pleasure at the thought. She’d enjoyed playing cards with him. She even liked the way he flirted with her—though she was sure it was just his way of manipulating her. No man had bothered to flirt with her before. How could they? Most of her life she had been flanked by Rose Ellen, and a man would have had to be blind not to prefer her younger sister to herself. If given the opportunity, Johann would probably be no different. Rose Ellen had that effect on the opposite sex, which just proved that the average man didn’t care one whit whether a woman had sense or not. Expecting a man to resist a pretty face was like expecting a dog not to roll in a cow pie.

After a quick peek around the empty block, she reached out and snatched the picture off the pole. In the next block, outside the sheriff’s office, she removed another one. It was lunacy, but she couldn’t help herself. The more people who saw the picture, the more likelihood there seemed of Johann’s being caught. She had to do what she could to prevent that from happening, at least till she knew how he’d come to be a desperado. A man deserved that much.

When she had taken down all the posters she could find on Main Street, she turned toward the livery stable, where she’d left her wagon. As she was walking past the town’s small hotel, a stage was letting off its passengers. A child hopped down from the cab, making Emma smile. The girl appeared to be six years old—just the age her niece would be. In fact, this little girl even
looked
like Annalise, although Emma hadn’t seen her for two years. She had dark brown hair cascading in neat ringlets around her pudgy face, and sparkling blue eyes fringed with long dark lashes. Her blue velvet dress and hair ribbons matched her eyes. Rosebud lips pursed at the world with a tentative, almost skeptical frown not often seen in a girl that age.

Emma tilted her head, then felt the blood drain out of her cheeks. The similarity was too uncanny! That
was
Rose Ellen’s daughter, she was sure of it! But where was Rose Ellen?

She surged forward just in time to see her sister disembark from the stagecoach. At the sight, she froze in shock—and confusion. What was Rose Ellen doing in Midday?

Her sister, beautifully dressed as always, wore a deep blue traveling frock much the same color as her daughter’s, with velvet cuffs and piping along the hem. Rose Ellen’s dark, luxurious hair was done up in one of those elaborate styles with cascading curls that Emma could only marvel
at, since twirling her hair into a simple bun was a feat for her. But Rose Ellen had always been able to copy styles out of magazines with just a few glances and a couple of hairpins.

Naturally, she sported a fashionable hat that matched her dress perfectly; this one had a veil of blue netting that covered her face, making her look older and more distinguished than Emma could remember. Not that it mattered. Rose Ellen, with her beautiful skin and pampered life, was one of those women who only seemed to become more lovely as the years went by. Her eager, plump, youthful look had given way to a more angular grace, which turned more heads than ever. Certainly there was no shortage of men taking note of her this morning. Emma counted no less than five pairs of hands helping her to step down from the carriage—even the driver, who looked as if he couldn’t care less whether ladies tripped coming down from his coach or not, had leapt off his perch to come to Rose Ellen’s aid.

And Rose Ellen accepted help in this simple task with open delight that made the men all the more glad they’d come to her rescue. No wonder males loved her!

Emma snapped out of her trance when Rose Ellen looked up and met her gaze. “Emma!” her sister cried, running forward. She grabbed her by the shoulders and kissed the air above one of Emma’s cheeks. “Dear, dear Emma!”